Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was at the hub of the Impressionist movement. He exhibited at all eight of the group exhibitions, and his paintings appear to typify the Impressionist style. However, his work is very complex and diverse. The variety of media in which he worked pastel, gouache, etching, even painting on ceramic tiles and his working practices, which involved careful studio preparation as well as plein air work, raise questions that require us to redefine our concept of Impressionism. Pissarro's own concept of his art interlocked with his anarchist ideology. His belief in a harmonious and classless future society, based on rural communities, was expressed in his lyrical idealizations of the French landscape. But, if in such paintings he played down the contemporary crisis in French agriculture, in his images of the Parisian suburbs and the port of Rouen he tried to come to terms with a modern, industrial society. This book, based on a 1990 touring exhibition organized by the British South Bank Centre, surveys his work in all media."